Twenty years ago, if you had asked any equity investor which bank's shares were destined to outperform over the next two decades - HSBC or Standard Chartered - he would have laughed in disbelief at your question. The answer was obvious: HSBC, of course.
Back then, HSBC was riding high, thanks to its dominance of Hong Kong's highly lucrative banking cartel. Flush with cash, its boss at the time, the redoubtable Willie Purves, was plotting his move into the global big time with the takeover of Britain's ailing Midland Bank.
In contrast, Standard Chartered was so accident-prone, it had become known among financiers as the banana skin bank.
A perennial takeover target following a string of poor business decisions, Standard Chartered had only survived a 1986 hostile bid from Britain's Lloyds Bank after supporting large share purchases by a group of white knight shareholders.
But bad luck and poor judgment continued to dog the bank. Its defence against the Lloyds bid led to an investigation by the Bank of England, and in 1987 it was forced by international disgust with apartheid to divest its South African business.
Hit hard by the 1987 market crash, Standard Chartered had no choice but to sell its US subsidiaries and launch a rights issue in order to strengthen its badly depleted capital base.